Guy did not mind, and Julia went out and left him alone. Scarcely was
she gone when he called to mind a letter which had been forwarded to him
from Cuylerville, and which he had found awaiting him on his return from
the church. Not thinking it of much consequence he had thrust it in his
pocket and in the excitement forgotten it till now. He had dressed for
dinner and worn his wedding coat, and he took the letter out and looked
at it a moment, and wondered whom it was from, as people ofttimes do
wait and wonder, when breaking the seal would settle the wonder so soon.
It was postmarked in New York, and felt heavy in his hand, and he opened
it at last and found that the outer envelope inclosed another one on
which his name and address were written in a handwriting once so
familiar to him, and the sight of which made him start and breathe
heavily for a moment as if the air had suddenly grown thick and
burdensome.

Daisy's handwriting! which he had never thought to see again; for after
his engagement with Julia he had burned every vestige of a
correspondence it was sorrow now to remember. One by one, and with a
steady hand, he had dropped Daisy's letters into the fire and watched
them turning into ashes, and thought how like his love for her they were
when nothing remained of them but the thin gray tissue his breath could
blow away. The four scraps of the marriage settlement which Daisy had
brought him on that night of storm he kept, because they seemed to
embody something good and noble in the girl; but the letters she had
written him were gone past recall, and he had thought himself cut loose
from her forever--when, lo! there had come to him an awakening to the
bitterness of the past in a letter from the once-loved wife, whose
delicate handwriting made him grow faint and sick for a moment as he
held the letter in his hand and read thereon: